


Once Upon A Dream

by Siara_Brandt



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Sleeping Beauty Solo, F/M, Fix-It, Princess Charming Rey, Sleeping Beauty Elements, Sleeping Beauty with a twist, The Rise of Skywalker - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:00:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21992593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siara_Brandt/pseuds/Siara_Brandt
Summary: For those Star Wars fans who were left feeling there had to be something more.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rose/Knight of Ren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	1. PROLOGUE PART I: REVELATION

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZigguratRolsovitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZigguratRolsovitch/gifts).



It was dark in this place, cavernous, like the macabre, surreal scenery of a nightmare that has been painted in somber and terrifying tones, a reflection of the subconscious realm where fears and the dark-unrevealed stay hidden. It was as if time had its own rules here. All things seemed to move in eerie slow motion, from the mist that surrounded her, to the breath of wind that further chilled her already-cold body for in that perpetual darkness the atmosphere stayed damp and cold as a tomb. And yet there was something almost alive woven through the shadows, a spark, an ember, perhaps a memory of life force that was waiting to be fanned again into existence. Although it could not be seen, nor heard, nor even identified, Rey could _feel_ it. Even the darkness shrouding the ruins of the ceiling arching high above her seemed to pulse with a dark energy. 

The place was not completely devoid of movement or light. Black, winged things swooped and circled in the upper reaches of the vast tower that vaulted above her. They were so far away that they faded like shadows themselves in and out of the gloom while a few murky rays of what looked like moonlight pierced some opening or window high above her. These cobalt-blue rays of light also pulsed strangely as they filtered down through the uncertain layers of shadows.

She was coming awake slowly in that disorienting terror-world, her consciousness widening only gradually, perhaps mercifully. The first things she saw were the massive stone figures set into arches in the thick stone walls that surrounded her. They were fearsome forms frozen in aggressive, warlike poses, and yet some of them bore the cambered wings of angels. Other obelisk-like columns had dark, intricate carvings on them in a language she did not understand. Birds of prey, also carved in menacing, life-like poses, sat atop others. It all had the feel of a graveyard save for the walls with their winding staircases and dark passageways that led into black nothingness. 

What unsettled her more than her surroundings, however, was the unseen, an entirely different menace that hung on the very air. As she tried to focus, a breathless sensation seized the center of her chest, taking her by surprise with its intensity and its suddenness. It bloomed into a burgeoning sense of panic, a fusing of those things that were invading her more rational thoughts, her vulnerability and her fear and her helplessness, all combined into one spiraling vortex that she was in danger of becoming hopelessly lost in.

She knew she had to control those things or they would control her. She had to leave this place before-

Before whatever she sensed was hiding in the shadows rose up to confront her. But when she tried to rise, she found that thick ropes bound her arms and her legs. As she lay there on her back, she tugged at the restraints, but to no avail. It made her even more aware of her helplessness and brought another wave of terror.

Where was she? That was first and foremost on her mind. The last thing she remembered was falling, but the memory was without beginning or end. Was she trapped in a nightmare? Wherever she was, everything about the place had a strange sense of unreality to it. That was when she became aware of the smell of death hanging in the air. That’s when she knew with a certainty that she was not alone.

* * *

  
She was lying there very still in the midst of the glorious wild tangle of her unbound hair, a woman of light and shadow, and ethereal beauty. Washed in the indigo-blue streaks of pulsing light that throbbed far above her with the regularity of a heartbeat, she looked like one of the stone statues around her. It was the darkness, he believed, that enhanced the pale beauty of her. For a long time she stayed as still as death, and when her eyes finally opened, he sensed her panic as she immediately tried to rise. A gleam of excitement, and more, came into his eyes as he watched her strain and struggle against the ropes. It would do her no good, he knew. She was his captive. At last.

His gaze moved slowly over her, this vision in the flesh, this enigma who had long been his obsession, from the moment he had first become aware of her existence. Long had he waited. Long had he anticipated this moment. And now that the moment had come, he wanted to savor each and every detail. Her body was young and it was strong, the better to serve his carefully-wrought plans. His breath left him in a low, evil laugh, a sibilant hiss of conquest that sounded not quite human. The spirit might be unwilling, but the flesh was definitely his for the taking.

* * *

  
  
A gasp escaped Rey as she turned her face and saw, in a flash of deep cobalt-blue light, a dark, cloaked figure detach itself from the shadows. Slow footfalls echoed from the walls around her, augmenting her sense of dread and foreboding.

A hooded robe was drawn far down over the man’s face, if indeed it was a man. She could not be certain because the features were hidden from her. The sinister figure glided smoothly forward, purposely forward, and when he stopped, the shadowed face slowly turned to look at her, or at least he appeared to look at her. Two translucent eyes reflected the glow of candles that had suddenly leapt into wavering flame from out of nowhere. And now Rey could see that the face in the shadow of the hood was the color of ashes, the very likeness of a death’s-head.

“You are awake now.”

This observation was spoken in a raspy voice that was almost inaudible. But at the sound of it, Rey felt almost overcome by a renewed surge of panic. From her visions she _knew_ who stood before her, although, against all logic, she fought the knowing.

As the figure drew nearer still, she was able to see the lines carved deeply into the ghoulish face, knew that face was but a reflection of all the evil that was at the core of the man’s soul, knew he had many names. Palpatine. Darth Sidious. He was the Pupeteer behind Snoke.

He stood looking down at her, passively silent although that silence was deceptive, she knew, for those terrible eyes were piercing in the shadows of the hood and missed nothing as he contemplated her with a thoroughness that further unnerved her. And then she understood the reason for the death stench. It came from him.

“I see fear in your eyes,” she heard as the hood fell back and the man they called the most evil Sith Lord the galaxy had ever seen, smiled sneeringly.

“There are decided advantages to being so infamous,” he croaked softly. “You are already afraid.”

“Where are we?”

“A very special place,” he replied, glancing around almost slyly. “One that concentrates the power of the dark side.” 

She tugged at her restraints which seemed to amuse him. “I know that a spirit like yours does not do well in confinement. Just as I know that patience has been a difficult lesson for you all these years.”

“What do you know of me?” she lashed out, losing control for a few moments, the torrent of emotion churning inside her coming to the surface.

Those translucent eyes seemed to quicken, to flare with something almost hungry, making Rey shrink back against the cold, hard slab she was lying upon – she couldn’t help herself - for it seemed he had the power to see right through her. Who did she think she was to go against him, this powerful Sith Lord who even among the generations of Sith was considered diabolically ruthless and completely without mercy.

“I know that Sith blood burns in your veins,” he said, watching for her reaction. “And I know you are aware of the bond we share, that _my_ blood flows in your- ”

“Don’t say it,” she gritted through clenched teeth. She could not bear to hear the words.

He was watching her face closely and as he drew even closer to her, the fear that he might touch her came rushing over Rey in a breathless wave.

“I see you recoil from me,” he sneered with amused sarcasm. “Such fear from someone I heard was fearless.”

He leaned closer to her. “Tell me, Rey, that you are not that screaming brat still waiting for the fairy tale ending that was promised to you in your childhood.”

He laughed lowly, evilly, and as he did so, his lips drew back until his teeth were bared in hideous mirth. The smell of decomposing flesh almost overwhelmed her. He was a predator, stoking her fear, just as he had done with Ben Solo all those years.

“We shall have to do what we can to exorcise such idealistic expectations from your mind. Because it would be a pity,” he hissed only inches from her face. “If your existence should end in a cold and lonely grave here in this forgotten temple, for you, too, would be forgotten as if you never existed.”

“Like my parents?”

The muscles around his mouth hardened as he continued to stare down at her with those penetrating eyes. There was pure maliciousness in his gaze as he said, “Should you choose not to embrace the good fortune that is your birthright, yes, you, too, will share their fate.”

As he turned away from her, she thought suddenly of Ben and wondered if he had said the same words to him. She thought of all the pain and torment he must have endured at the hands of this monster.

He must have read her thoughts because his head came around with a jerk. As he pivoted back to her, she saw something new in his eyes, something hard and narrowed, something that she instinctively knew did not bode well for her.

His mouth twisted ferally and the eyes that were as colorless as the mists eddying on the stone floor around them seemed to glow with a jaundiced light now. The bones of his cheeks and forehead were very prominent, and distorted, so that he was like a hideous caricature of a man. The flesh stretching tightly across the bone was so cracked and lined that it was almost like reptile skin.

With an almost impulsive gesture, he reached out a hand. But then, perhaps sensing her revulsion, he hesitated. “I didn’t bring you here to make you feel _nice_ ,” he jeered as he leaned even closer to her, one corner of his ravaged mouth lifting in something between a smile and a snarl. As she held her breath, he brushed the back of his hand lightly against her hair.

She was so frightened that she felt paralyzed inside. It was as if she was not really there. It was as if she had taken herself out of that place, if only in her mind. Vaguely, she could still feel the pressure of his fingers, could smell the awful stench of the grave that clung to him, but a part of her, perhaps the most important part, remained detached, disconnected and unshadowed by the physical contact.

The stroking continued. It was barely a touch but it seemed indecent somehow just as the quickening in his eyes unsettled her, till she had to close her own eyes so she would not have to see him.

With her eyes still closed, she asked over the hard pounding of her heart, “What do you want with me?”

“What do I want? That if I tell you to give me your soul to look at, you will obey me without question and without hesitation.”

His whisper was so close to her ear that Rey felt the blood in her veins turn to ice as the caress shifted to her cheek. As her frantic brain sought a way to fight all he was doing to her, she opened her eyes.

As his last terrible words hung between them in the silence, he stood looking down at her as if she was a new puzzle he hadn’t quite figured out yet. Not completely. But all the while, she knew he was preying on her fear. Vampire-like, he drew from it, fed off it.

“No,” she told him. “I will give you nothing.”

“Think you not?” she heard. He stood there looking down at her a little longer, his expression intent, but his voice was cold as he said, “Forget him. He is nothing. Not to you. And not to me. He was always a means to an end. A pathetic child who could never let go of his past,” he said contemptuously. “He was a slave to the weaknesses of his lineage and in the end, he turned from the dark side, which made him even weaker.”

“No,” she contended. “He became stronger because of that.”

“I took him when no one else wanted him. I molded him out of the fire of his afflictions. Where were his saviors? _I_ was his savior. _I_ became both mother and father to him. His teacher when others failed him.”

“You poisoned his mind. You tried to strip away his soul and replace it with your own desires. But in the end, you can’t win.”

“Ah, there it is again. Your stubborn clinging to an unrealistic sense of justice and fairness. Have you not learned by now that those things don’t exist?”

Even though she felt the force of the darkness in him, she steadied the fear inside herself and looked him full in the face. “Only when monsters like you try to destroy those things.”

There was danger in provoking him. She knew this but something drove her. “Who are you but a puppeteer who must hide behind others because you do not have the courage to show your own face? You must use other people to do what you are not capable of doing yourself.”

“Very soon you shall see what I am capable of,” he said lowly, threateningly.

As he spoke the final words, his hand gripped a fistful of her hair, so tightly that she had to keep herself from crying out. Still, perhaps foolishly, she could not stay silent. 

“Whatever name you call yourself at the moment, you cannot hide from the fact that you are rotting from the inside out from the evil that eats away at your soul. You are a decaying corpse of a man who must destroy others as you will eventually destroy yourself. But the truth is that behind the masks you wear, you are only a flesh and blood man.”

His teeth ground tightly together as he lurched around to confront her. “Yes, I am a flesh and blood man, one who can destroy you in a moment if I choose to do so.”

His voice lowered to an even deeper, more dangerous rasp. “What would you say, I wonder, if you knew that I was the voice inside your head all along?”

She gazed back at him, shaking her head in silence.

“Who is hiding from the truth now? Look deeper and you will see that your true calling, your _destiny_ , _is_ the dark side.”

His hand, with its threat of violence and violation, swept wide. He gave her an evil smile and then, raising his ashen face, he said, “Behold, Rey, the forces I can raise against you, against the galaxy, the awesome power of the dark side.”

All around them, suddenly, Rey could see Sith multitudes, fearsome in their black shrouds.

“If I can raise all these Sith from the dead, do you still call me a mere flesh and blood man? Who has such power in the entire galaxy? Who has power over life and death? I have brought you here to join with me, not to fight me.”

Again she shook her head. “And become what you have become? I will never agree to that.”

“But I think that you will. Ren said you had a mind of your own, but you will soon come to realize not only that everything you could ever want is within your grasp, but that if you do _not_ join me, it will be the cause of great suffering for you. Very great suffering.”

“As Ben suffered,” she whispered.

“He went the way of his grandfather. _You_ can fail as he did and be destroyed, or you can rise. With me.”

“You offer me the universe while you threaten me at the same time? You are dark and you are twisted, a perversion of every good and decent thing that has ever existed.”

At her words, he only laughed. “It makes this so much more exhilarating.”

“What does?”

“The fear coursing through your veins right now. The passion, the anger, and, yes, the hatred. They make this all more meaningful.”

“You _want_ me to be afraid,” he heard and looked at her sharply. Ren had told him that she had resisted _him_ , but he had not expected _this_. His own wrath flared before he could control it completely. But he thrived on violent emotions. While his body wasted away, his mind flourished on the darker passions which gave him focus, gave him strength, and opened the door more fully to the dark side. She had been an unknown entity, but he was beginning to understand her powers, knew that she could very well be a threat to him. But she did intrigue him, and the idea here was to control _her_.

“No matter what you feel, it will not change things in the end,” he told her.

But she was aware of his treachery and knew the truth was not in him.

“You will yield to me.”

She only stared back at him silently.

“Stubborn to the very end. I am not without compassion or understanding,” he said. “I will not kill you yet although you have given me just cause to do just that. I will give you time to come to your senses and choose to join me. But should you continue to fight me,” he warned, a dark glint coming into his eyes. “I will destroy you. And when you are begging me for mercy, even then I will not put an end to your suffering. Let me remind you one last time that it doesn’t have to be that way,” he said, reverting to the role of a parent confronted by an unreasonable, disobedient child. “You can respect me as your superior, or you can decide to be a sacrifice to your foolishness. The choice is yours.

“Contemplate well, granddaughter, what I am offering you,” he said as his hand swept wide once again and the legions of Sith raised their voices until they blended into one unholy din that echoed and re-echoed from the stone walls. He raised his own voice to be heard over them. “ _This_ is your destiny. The origin of your roots. The Sith. Through me, I have insured that their blood also flows in your veins. They are risen again and they wait to do your bidding.”

“I have no wish to command them.”

“We shall see,” he cackled. “Someday you might even use them against me,” he taunted. “Does that not tempt you? Or have you not yet learned that vengeance can have an incredibly sweet taste?”

With another wave of his hand, they had all sunk back into the ground from whence they had come, the bone among the ashes. But Rey did not see this. She was already slipping into her own dark oblivion.


	2. PROLOGUE PART II: THE CHOICE

She woke to see Ben Solo standing above her. Or something taking the form of Ben Solo.

“Is it you?” she whispered, fearful of another distortion of reality. There were gaseous mists in this place, and something more insidious, and she was certain they were adding to her confusion, making her brain see things that weren’t really there.

“Look inside yourself for the truth,” he said.

The ebony strands of his hair were wet and hanging down in his face. His shirt was torn and shredded in places as it clung to his muscular chest and shoulders. Ben, yes. She had no doubt it was him. She could feel the strength of his life force.

He undid her bounds with swift, sure fingers, speaking to her as he did so. “We have to leave this place. He has more power here.”

She knew he was talking about Palpatine, of course, but part of her brain wondered: Why would Palpatine allow this?

“This is a poisonous place where nothing is as it seems,” she heard. “Come. We need to go. Now.”

But she held back, sensing on a very deep level that things were not as they seemed. He had said so himself.

He held a black-gloved hand out. “You said before that you wanted to give me your hand. Give it to me now.” But she hesitated, distracted for a moment by a conviction that some threat, a very powerful and dangerous one, was watching from the depths of blackness around them.

Ben grabbed her wrist, not harshly, yet there was an urgency in his tightening fingers. Giving her no chance to protest, he pulled her along with him. When she stumbled, he turned back to her. Held captive by the dark intensity of his look, she drew a slow, deep breath as something surged between them.

He was the one hesitating now, but that hesitation lasted only for a moment. Without warning, he dragged her against his black-clad chest and bent his head over hers. Greedily, ruthlessly, his mouth ravaged hers. As the kiss deepened, Rey was swept away on a torrent of passion so powerful that she lost herself. And found herself again as something rapturous awakened in her. Something that bloomed into a wild rapture of soaring, beautiful magic.

When it was over, the sweet, brutal intensity of that kiss still burned like a fire in her veins. The taste of him lingered on her mouth. With something so simple as a kiss it was as if he had branded her very soul.

She forgot everything else. In that moment, the only reality for her was the man whose shirt she was still clinging to. Something had happened to her with that kiss, something potent and enduring, something that had changed her.

They had come apart suddenly. Both of them were still panting. Both had been caught unaware.

Before they had time to consider the consequences of what had just happened, they were disrupted abruptly as a voice from the darkness said, “Did you think you could get away from me so easily?”

As Ben turned and drew himself up, Rey could feel the terrible power of him, body and soul, as he prepared himself to meet the threat of Palpatine, who now stepped out of the shadows that shrouded him.

“The last of the Skywalkers. Finally. You are here just as I intended you would be.”

As Palpatine’s glance briefly touched Rey, something dark and feral flared in his eyes. He turned back to Ben.

“It was always you’re fate, Skywalker. The weak must continually be weeded out. And when you are gone, there will be no one left to oppose me.”

“There will always be someone to oppose you,” Ben said with a slight, defiant thrust of his chin.

Palpatine laughed softly. “Surely not you. You cannot defeat me. I know your weaknesses, which are old as sin and just as predictable. However,” he went on. “I am beginning to see how much you have managed to keep from me. Perhaps you _are_ stronger than I gave you credit for. But how much of your strength comes from the help of your knights, I wonder, who have proven to be more resourceful than I had given _them_ credit for. Do you think I have not been aware of them in the shadows plotting against me? I shall take care of them once and for all when I have finished with you.”

He lifted his cadaverous face to the darkness above them. “A fitting place for this, is it not? The air fairly crackles with dark energy.” His gaze returned to Rey. “She is my granddaughter. Flesh of my flesh. Blood of my blood. There is nothing more powerful than that. My bond with her will be even greater than my bond with you.” One arm swept out. “I shall comfort the long-lost child, just as I comforted you.”

“We both know that isn’t what you want from her,” Ben said tautly.

“It wasn’t so long ago that we wanted the same thing from her,” Palpatine reminded Ben with quiet mockery. “Regretful that you could be so fickle, but then, you were always so easily swayed by your pathetic desire for affection.”

His death-pale eyes turned sly. “Was I so wrong to expect loyalty from you? Did I not care for you all those years when no one else would? Alas, you have proven to be as much a disappointment to me as you were to everyone else. So disappointing that they wanted to get rid of you, so disappointing that they tried to _murder_ you. _She_ , on the other hand, will not disappoint me as you have.”

“She will not have the chance to disappoint you.”

“Do you think you can stop me from taking what I want? Enough of this. It’s time the Skywalkers as a separate force in the galaxy were obliterated for good.”

However, it was not Ben that Palpatine targeted, but Rey. Ben had pushed her to the ground behind him, shielding her with his body. Even so, Palpatine held out a gnarled hand and roared, “On your knees. Worship me.”

Immediately, it was as if every cell in Rey’s body was paralyzed. Against her will, she was dropping to her knees while Palpatine laughed with maniacal glee. As the bottom of his cape swirled, Rey saw, in a flash, Palpatine as he really was. She wondered that his body was partially covered with scales. At the back of his robe, a row of spines showed through the cape. Vile and loathsome in form, it seemed he was not quite human, but a being that was more serpentine, more alien.

Still paralyzed, Rey felt like her soul was being ripped from her body. She could hear Ben’s anguished cry as her life force faded away. “No!” She was aware of him on his knees beside her, but she was already growing cold inside, colder even than her surroundings as her world faded to blackness.

Ben, who held her limp body in his arms, looked up as Palpatine cried, “Do it!” His voice was hoarse and husky with fiendish excitement. “Save her. Sacrifice yourself and she will live.”

Rising out of the darkness, Rey could feel Ben’s hand upon her, could feel his life force as it flowed into her. All those things that were buried deep inside him, those things that self-preservation had forced him to hide, flooded her growing consciousness. It was almost more than she could bear. But she was aware, too, of the awfulness of him fading away from her at the same time.

When she was fully awake, she saw Ben lying motionless on the cold stone beside her. Almost breathless from the agony of losing him, she crawled to her hands and knees and crouched there, trembling from the intensity of her emotions. 

“Now that he is gone, we can be about our own business,” she heard.

She raised her eyes slowly.

“He made his choice, as I knew he would. Now you are both Palpatine and Skywalker. Such an alliance has never existed before. Kylo Ren fulfilled his destiny. As will you.”

“This is what you had planned all along?” she asked, low-voiced.

For answer he gave a slight nod of his hooded head.

“Then why did you ask me to join you?”

“A willing surrender is always so- satisfying. Almost irresistible, in fact. I couldn’t help myself. Of course, it wouldn’t have changed things in the end.”

He chuckled under his breath and held out his hand but drew it back almost immediately, underestimating her focus, but curious about the unexpected enigma that she was proving to be. She had depths that remained unplumbed, dark corners of her soul that were unreachable. Even by him.

“You are so much more than I ever imagined.” 

“And you are a monster, a soul-less thing who could never understand the good that was in Ben Solo. That is the reason you sought to destroy him.” 

A cynical smile twisted the death-pale lips. The mocking light in Palpatine’s eyes reflected the contempt he had for Ben Solo. “He couldn’t hide his feelings for you from me. _That_ was his downfall. The result is that the darkness has swallowed him whole. I assure you, his punishment could have been far worse.”

“ _You_ were the cause of his downfall.”

He clasped his gnarled hands together and regarded her more intently. “Ah, there it is.”

“There is what?”

“You are so much more than you were before. So much was brought to life with that kiss. There is immeasurable power in your grief. And in your anger. It runs so deep, I can feel how utterly consuming they are for you, how unquenchable. You don’t know what to do with them,” he observed thoughtfully. “And now that you must contend with _his_ instability and _his_ volatility as well, it must seem overwhelming to you, especially since it is all so new.”

It did seem overwhelming. Rey could barely contain the dark emotions roiling inside her. She had to fight to control them.

“He was never going to be more than a Skywalker. However, he was useful in that he was the key to unleashing _your_ full potential, which I shall soon take for myself.”

She stared at him, only now comprehending.

“I can feel the dark intensity of your pain. Ah, yes, such exquisite torment, your grief. Caring for another being is always a distraction. In the end, it weakens you, disrupts your focus. Like Kylo Ren, who always hated himself for the needing.”

He grinned in hideous mirth. “Even your hatred towards me gives you power. Savor it. Embrace it. You can learn from it, understand it, and then use it against your enemies.”

But he must not have felt compassionate grief before, Rey thought, because it gave her focus rather than weakness, terrible focus. It was like a sun’s rays passing through a magnifying glass. It had power to intensify and to destroy.

And Palpatine must have become aware of the combined force of the emotions burning within her. Perhaps he was even a little afraid.

“Like Kylo Ren. You see how his one moment of happiness destroyed him.” Palpatine’s malevolent eyes probed to see how much he had hurt her, for therein lay her greatest weakness, he knew, one that he would use against her.

Rey was pale, but defiant as she faced him. “It wasn’t his happiness that destroyed him. It was you.”

He half rose to his feet with a snarl. “I shall teach you about destruction,” he said, his tone dark and menacing. “And now it is time.”

He held his hand out, but she easily deflected that, which took him by surprise. And then she held her own hand out towards Ben.

“Don’t touch him,” Palpatine shrilled. With a wave of his hand she was thrust violently back. She couldn’t keep from crying out in pain as she slid over the hard, jagged stone.

“You will find no pulse in his corpse,” Palpatine hissed venomously. “He is dead and beyond your help now. If you try to touch him again, I warn you, there will be nothing left of him to even mourn.”

Rey knew it was no idle threat and she strived to keep her thoughts from him now, so she resisted him, put up shields as Ben had done. She knew there was only deception in Palpatine, that truth was always an illusion where he was concerned. While Ben’s life force had been extinguished, just as a candle is blown out by a puff of wind, it was as if the wick still burned, waiting to be fanned back into life again. But she must be very, very careful.

She glared back at Palpatine as he said, “You do not understand the origins of the Sith. You do not know who they really were. But you will soon embrace their legacy, the one that was bestowed upon you through _me._ Only when you give your power over to me, can I harness it and realize its full potential. Now you will join with me.”

But Rey was drawn by something beyond them, beyond the darkness that surrounded them. “Your end will- ” she began, but stopped as Palpatine looked sharply at her.

“What do you see?” he hissed, a new light flaring in his eyes.

When she did not answer him, his expression turned savage. “Tell me what you see,” he warned darkly. “Or I will send you down into the depths of horror. Pure, stark, raving horror.”

“Your end will see you drowning in the depths of the darkness in which you abandon yourself,” she whispered as if in a trance.

Before either of them could speak again, there came a deep rumbling sound, one that originated from deep underground. The ground began to tremble. Some of the statues toppled. Stones fell, riven into shattered pieces.

“No,” Rey heard Palpatine cry out.

There was a tremendous ripping sound as the rocks split open and deep crevices appeared all around them.

“What’s happening?” she gasped as the ground continued to grow more and more unsteady beneath her feet.

From the crevices spewed violent flashes of sparks and fire. Dense clouds of hot, sulphurous smoke rose and these were lit by a sullen red glare which also illuminated the black walls of the crevices that were widening still.

Although it was her first thought, Rey could not get to Ben. There was a great gash in the ground between them. It opened wider and wider until it seemed a bottomless, dark chasm that separated them.

She heard Palpatine’s howl and the gnashing of his teeth as he raised his fists to the darkness. She saw him stagger, his working mouth still extended wide in savage curses, saw his cowering, caped body as it was crushed by falling rocks. Soon he had vanished from her sight into the smoky depths while Rey stood there not sure that it was not all a dream, or the lingering vision of an endless nightmare.


	3. Chapter 1

Rey hesitated and looked back over her shoulder, her footsteps faltering in that wilderness known as Eth. The only sound was her own breathing as she stopped suddenly. Shading her eyes with her hand, she scanned the desolate terrain with its single set of footprints trailing behind her. The Orudon sun beat down with a vengeance from the cloudless red sky, heating the air to an almost breathless temperature. Sweat dampened her hair, unchecked trickles of it escaping her head covering and stinging her eyes. She wiped it away with her sleeve but could do nothing about the beads of sweat coursing down inside her clothing. Resolutely, she turned and moved forward again, but always her thoughts were for the past and what she had left behind her, not forgetting. Never forgetting.

Her long journey here had led her to yet another nightmare world. She was no stranger to desolate planets but this one had nearly pushed her to her limit. Orudon was as isolated a place as she had ever seen. Bleak and barren, the terrain was mostly uninhabited. It had once been a haven for seditionists of all kinds, spies, smugglers, criminals even, until the entire planet had been purged. Most of the vegetation had been scorched into oblivion, so that the only trees that grew here now were twisted into weird, serpentine shapes that reminded her of tormented souls that had been suddenly frozen that way. At night the sky was filled with strange lights that pulsed with intense, shifting colors. And the stars- The stars were worth seeing here. Even if nothing else was.

But while the sun was out, a sense of forlorn nothingness held the place. Rey felt small here, insignificant in a way that she had never felt before. The sense of powerlessness was so strong that it was almost terrifying. Even so, she pushed on.

She had bound up her wounds as best she could, both the internal and the external, although it was the internal wounds, those that ravaged her heart, that were far worse. She could not banish the grief that had sunk its claws deep into the marrow of her bones. All she could do was to not let herself feel too deeply, for if she did, it seemed she would fall into a million shards of grief too painful to be endured. If not for the spark of hope, the one she clung to so desperately, her soul, and her future, would be as bleak and empty as her surroundings.

As the wind began to rise around her, harbinger of night here on Orudon, she felt even more deeply her isolation. A fitting place for a seer, Rey thought as she plodded on. The perfect place for a soul condemned to exile. It was said that Orudon was haunted by the dead of an ancient war that had wiped out most of its civilization long before the purging. Maybe that was true. Although if the dead truly did linger here, Rey could not feel them. She was only aware of a soul-deep sadness that she knew well enough might be merely the echo of her own sadness.

She was taken by surprise, suddenly and wholly against her will, as the tears threatened to rise. Again. With everything in her, she gathered up all her resolve and reminded herself that there were times for tears, but this was not one of them. There were times to fall apart, but she was not going to let that happen. Not yet. Not until-

Not until she did everything she could to find him.

She closed her eyes, losing herself in the memory of the kiss again, wishing she could go back and undo things. Wishing she could stop what had happened. The only thing that kept her going was the glimmer of hope that Ben had not merely faded into nothingness as Palpatine had wanted her to believe. She knew that he had been _taken_ from her. She would not know this if she had not been immersed herself, for the briefest of moments, in a black oblivion so deep that it had almost consumed her as well. It had taken everything in her to keep Palpatine from knowing what she had seen, that place where Ben was in a state near death, a sleep so deep and so profound that she was not sure that even _she_ could awaken him.

But she could not abandon him, _would_ not abandon him as others had done. His childhood had been like being thrown to the wolves. Abandonment was all he had ever known, along with violation and pain. All of it set in motion merely because of his ancestral ties, which had turned out to be nothing but a curse to him. She knew that it was all calculated, a plan that had put in motion a long time ago. He was not a person to any of them. He never had been. He was just a means to an end. The final torment had been, by far, the cruelest of the tortures that he had endured, the most wrenching loss. She had seen so much in an instant, saw, too, that he had no regrets for his final decision. He had sacrificed himself for her. Willingly.

Because of that, and more, she let herself be led almost helplessly into the unknown for in those last, agonizing moments, alongside her grief and her shock she had also learned a secret. A secret that could make things right again. If she had the courage to face it.

Adjusting her face cloth more firmly across the lower part of her face, she knew full well that her journey had only just begun. And when she spoke, the wind took her words into the deepening void of night where there were only the stars to guide her.

“Wait for me,” she whispered.


	4. Chapter 2

Rey laced her fingers tightly together on the table before her. Then she pressed her twined hands against her forehead and bowed her head, lost in her thoughts for several long, silent moments. She looked up again when the door opened.

As Asenath entered the room, Rey heard, “The forces arrayed against you are ancient. And they are powerful. Evil for the sake of evil.”

“That is not a reassuring thought,” Rey said as the seer took a seat opposite her.

“You have not made this journey so that I can tell you merely what you wish to hear,” Asenath said as she set her candlestick on the table between them. Over the erratically-flickering flame, she narrowed her gaze at Rey. “It is not always easy being one who sees things that are not discerned with the eye.”

Even though it was not a question, Rey shook her head slowly. Her gaze shifted as she briefly took in her surroundings. The rocks around them gave off an intense blue light which tinted everything to a deep cobalt blue, even the faces of the two women sitting at the table. Vapors rose from unseen crevices in the stones and wafted like ghosts around them. These, too, were tinted to an eerie blue. Perhaps it was merely the wind moving deep in the caves but to Rey it seemed as if the whole cavern breathed mystery and secrets.

Asenath’s long black hair reached to the floor. The wavering candlelight played over it and danced in her dark eyes. Her face was not young, yet neither was it old. Her dress was adorned here and there with iridescent black feathers and these also caught the candlelight and moved when she did.

With a shrug of one black-clad shoulder, she said, “All things come together for a purpose. We cannot always know what that purpose is until we come to the end of our journey and look back over where we have been. We are like the blind groping in the darkness. But still the light beckons us. You feel its pull even now.

“You feel even more,” she said perceptively as she studied Rey’s face more closely. “There are shadows in your eyes. You come here tempest-tossed, lost. Seeking- ” She paused a moment before she said almost feelingly, “Seeking a resolution to the winds that are tearing you asunder.”

Rey stared down at her joined hands. “I- Yes,” she acknowledged in a voice no louder than a whisper.

“All that you feel is beyond what you can express to me,” Asenath said, not without compassion.

“I don’t know what to do with it all,” Rey confessed, leaning slightly forward until she felt the heat of the candle flame against her face.

“That is because you are driven by many things, hate and regret among the strongest of these. You must gain control over them or they will control you in the end. That is not to say you should not allow yourself to feel those things, but feeling is not the same as yielding. Behind it all, there is something even stronger that drives you, the thing that has brought you here.”

She looked shrewdly at Rey who frowned and bowed her head, dangerously in touch for a moment with a hollow, aching pain deep inside her breast. She drew a slow breath, feeling almost stripped naked under the seer’s dark, penetrating gaze.

“Do such things not weaken me?” Rey asked in an agony of emotion, her voice catching on the words.

“It is all right to have feelings,” came the answer. “Your emotions are who you are. You must embrace them fully, for if they succeed in stripping them away from you, then they will have won.

They will have left behind only an empty vessel. You must embrace every last emotion within you to find your resolution, even the terrible ones.”

Rey closed her eyes and heard, “All that you have ever felt is who you are. The greatest loss, the fall, is that we lose at all. As for the one you seek, he is like a butterfly trapped in crystal.”

The light quickened in Rey’s eyes as she opened them again. “Palpatine wanted me to believe that he had destroyed him.”

“There is no truth in the Sith Lord. That is the way of the Dark Side. He wished to frighten you as much as he could because he needed your terror as much as he needed your body. Those given over to the dark side feed off dark energy. It gives them power. But you see through the lies. _He_ is ever before you.”

“Yes,” Rey whispered, realizing only now how much she needed to say the words. “There are impenetrable layers of darkness between us, but he _is_ there. I can feel him. He is only a shadow existence that stays just beyond my reach, but Ben lingers, like a wolf’s howl that is never ending. And I saw- ”

“What is it you have seen?” Asenath urged.

Rey had seen, for the briefest of moments, a place of strange reflections, of intense color and- 

“Glass thorns,” she said. “I saw glass thorns.”

Asenath nodded and said, “It will take everything within you, this quest. And more. It will also take a frightening amount of trust. In me. And in yourself. Perhaps that will be your greatest challenge. To get past your own self-doubt. But to succeed, you must let yourself have faith. In those things you have not yet begun to understand. And in yourself. Despite how much of yourself you try to keep buried.”

Rey did not reply. The seer was right. There was much she would not allow herself to face. If she even got close to that receptacle of pain that resided in her, she feared she might become immersed there and shatter into painful pieces, so she kept it buried so deeply that it was almost a separate part of her. 

Asenath was silent as she continued to study Rey’s face, and then she said, “But it will do you no good to move through your existence like the living dead on Ciar. Blind hope and blind faith are hard things to cling to. When you think you have finally hit bottom, you see that there are deceptive levels and you begin a helpless descent again and again, hoping, perhaps, that it is really ascent. Half your heart believes it is so. Half is fearful. Just when you think things are ended, they come back to haunt you. _He_ haunts you.”

“Yes,” Rey admitted in a ghost of a voice. “I won’t stop searching until I find him.” She looked searchingly at the woman across the table. “Tell me, is there truly hope?”

“There is always hope, _if_ you have the courage to allow it to have a place in your heart. If not, the darkness can swallow you whole. _Or_ it can eat at you piece by piece until there is nothing left. This is what the darkness wants. To destroy all light. But hope- It’s that light we hold onto when the darkness falls.”

“If only I had done things differently- ”

“You have yet to learn, child, that what seem to be random moments of chance are where you were meant to be all along. Your journey is a lonely one, as was his,” she went on. “And yet aloneness can become awareness. Of who we really are inside. Ben Solo survived in the only way that he could survive, but in all his turbulent years, deep down in the hidden recesses of his heart, he felt it always, the call to the light. Despite his agony of loss, despite the scars from wounds that brutality carved out, deep in his heart he kept a vision of all life should be. A part of him yearned to live life purely and not through the choking mire that he was drowning in. And yet he was afraid to let himself believe that he would find someone with the willingness to stay by his side, even to touch, unafraid, the dark things inside him, to ease the wounding of his soul. While he believed with all his heart that those things were too strong for _you_ , that you would turn from him in horror, as others had turned from him before, he had come to hope that he might eventually lay those things down at last, like heavy armor, and you would accept the terrible things inside him and tell him, very truthfully, that he deserved peace at last. In the end, he failed to save himself because he chose to save you, but therein lay his redemption. And just as you have seen the darker things, you have also seen the wounded beauty of his soul.

“You must go now to Anyrin, a world within a world, with its vast wildwoods and its seas of shadow light. There you will find the first of those things you seek. This is your destiny. And his.”

Her eyes had flecks of translucent, changing color that went so deep they were like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope in the candlelight. 

“Then there _is_ hope?” Rey asked, still needing the reassurance.

“All is not lost. You know that or you would not be here. The ravens will tell you, when they rise to the Anyrin moon, where the gate to the wolven field is. There you will find the wolf driver who will give you the elixir that you need. You must drink a portion of the elixir every day without fail.”

“What is in it?”

“Do not ask. Just trust and do as I say.”

Rey searched for signs of deception, but saw only truth in the seer’s eyes.

“If you are determined enough, or desperate enough, you must find it in yourself to have faith in me.”

“This elixir will help me see?”

“It will help you in your quest,” Asenath replied.

Could she trust this woman, Rey asked herself. Or would she be foolish to do so? The mysterious elixir could be poison for all she knew, bitter poison, another trick of the dark side.

“Not poison.” Asenath’s words startled her. It was as if she had read her mind. “It is the only pathway to life.” She smiled faintly at the confused expression on Rey’s face. “At first you _will_ find the elixir bitter, exceedingly so, but in the end you will realize how sweet it really is. Sweet as a kiss to awaken a prince,” she went on mysteriously. “But only the right kiss.”

“You talk in riddles,” Rey said.

“There are times when the truth must hide itself in riddles. Sometimes it is only for the wise to understand. Wisdom in the wrong hands- Well, you have seen where that can lead. As for the wolf driver on Anyrin, our ancestors are common ones. Yet another stroke of chance which guides us along our fated path.”

“Even if I feel lost?” Rey couldn’t help asking.

“When you believe, you will never be truly lost,” Asenath replied. “Come, let us watch the night sky as the stars come out. There is nothing else like it.” She led Rey to the opening of the cave.

Looking up, Rey shook her head, still assailed by doubt. The sky seemed as immense as the task before her. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“You must do it. If you fail, then you are both lost and all that your soul touches, or has ever touched upon, is lost with you. The treasure is hidden from the foolish, not the frightened. There is no sin in fear. Your path will take you through many dark places which you cannot avoid, some that will seem to run the course of a nightmare. The darkness and all those caught in its web of dark delusions, those souls that are already half immersed in torment, will continue to rise up against you. But your special vision will pierce the deepest darkness nevertheless. You have already seen their fury to destroy, but you have a weapon, too. Hope. Keep this close to your heart. Never lose it. You have already seen that there are forces that will help you, too. But be wary of others who hide in plain sight. They will weave their dark enchantments to try and blind you and make you stray from your path. The darkness is treacherous, a pit into which many fall. In the end there is only truth, whether you seek it, or whether you do not.

“Your journey will eventually take you to Prisma, where the dark crystals grow. There you will look upon mountains of glass, breathtaking mountains. Even the seas there are like glass, of colors so intense they also will take your breath away. It is a beautiful world, to be sure, but its forests are deadly, a landscape so sharp and jagged that nothing can pass there that will not be cut to shreds. You will face not only your own reflection there, but your deepest fears as well. And there, immured in a crystal fortress, you will also find your prince, waiting for you to find him. His prison is a tower, a high place of worship to the dark side. Beware Gyan, the dragon who guards over it. Its coils are fearsome and its heated breath able to scorch anything that looks it in the eye.

There came a long, piercing cry, a haunting sound that echoed and re-echoed through the darkness. A night bird of Eth, perhaps. Rey had never heard such a sound.

“An avan calling for its mate,” Asenath said as she stood with her eyes closed and her face lifted to the ebon sky. The wind took her long hair so that it floated like a dark veil around her. Opening her eyes again, she said, “Look. Above this unmovable place, there are the stars, among which are the secrets that you seek, along with the keys to the doors that those secrets unlock. Do not such stars inspire hope?”

“They are beautiful” Rey said on a wondering breath.

“Because they are a reflection of the Light themselves.” Her lips curved into a smile. “Have faith, child. And remember that the hardest part of the journey is from within, not without. You must trust _you_. You must let go to begin to hold, take before you can begin to give, die to allow life. Struggles, all. The greatest sin is always that we reveal not what we were meant to be, but what life taught us to be and that, without knowing, we can let ourselves become prisoners to the lies of the darkness. But in the end, believe that you shall stand in the light of the greatest of all the fairy tales that you ever heard as a child and it will be so.”

* * *

He existed at the edge of a fathomless black chasm. He existed just this side of death. It was the very edge, the very farthest he could go. The paleness of death was in his face. He had scars, too. Old ones. And new ones. 

It was the very whispers and echoes of time in this place that stirred him from his deep sleep, even while they kept him helplessly immured within invisible bounds, bounds not made for mortals. Yet there were infinitesimal spaces of time in which he was aware of the subtle, shifting transitions between light and dark as shadows moved over old stone, over him. Pale wisps of mist were ever present and these moved in eerie slow motion with every phantom wind that played over the crystalline landscape. 

The sun of this hushed world rose at intervals in aureate splendor. It was enchanted light, ethereal light weaving a web of warmth over everything it touched, even over the one sleeping in his glass prison.

Silence held this lorn world, but even the silence held magic here. With each rising of the sun, the softest of winds would also rise and cause the glass thorns to quiver in tremulous response, which filled the air with dream-like melody, a haunting resonance that wafted like angel voices through the misty veils.

The wind bestirred memory in his mind, as well. There where the ephemeral shadows shifted in ghostlike tracery, in a high alcove of the tower, the sunlight played over his ashen features, blazing the black strands of his hair into gold. The wind blew a stray strand across his cheek and partially dissipated the diaphanous mist-shroud that drifted ever over the faintest throbbing of a pulse.

The mist was, in many ways, like his thoughts. Both were fragile and elusive. Lost in the never-ending oblivion of darkness that was his prison, there were times when he could feel the mist wrap itself around him like a wisp of smoke, touching without hurting. He tried to rise out of the mist but could not. Yet traces of an iron will still remained. He tried to make his hand reach out, though he did not understand the reaching. He tried to make his voice call out for help, though he did not understand the calling. Still, there were moments, rare as they were, when it almost seemed that he could gather his scattered thoughts into some kind of sensible order.

But those things never completely took hold and they would fade so quickly and so completely, it was as if they had never existed at all and he would be left with only a vague yearning, a tenuous thing, but one that was soul-deep nevertheless, for deep inside his heart there lingered an aching, lonely void, a void that at times widened and threatened to pull him even deeper into the darkness. What remained of him was more intensely aware of this than anything else around him. It was as if jagged thorns had pierced his heart and left ragged holes, very ragged holes. Even in his deep sleep, he could feel the pain of wounds. But while the flush of dawn grew around him, there was no resolution to the pain, just as there was nowhere for it to go, so it stayed trapped inside him.


	5. Chapter 3

“He’s just standing there,” Rose said with a quick glance over her shoulder. She looked back at Rey and in a lowered voice, added, “Like a bird watching its prey.”

Rey agreed. She looked, too, but to her the tall figure standing so still in the shadows looked more like some dark ancient warlord than a bird of prey. Dressed entirely in black, from his helmet all the way down to his booted feet, he appeared ominous, even menacing, a blacker shape among the shadows as the pale moonlight sifted down around him.

“He’s studying us, the same as we’re studying him,” Rey decided out loud.

Chewbacca voiced his agreement but had nothing more to say. He had already given his opinion and now merely waited for Rey to make a decision.

Rey had met up with Rose and Chewbacca by sheer chance. Once again, she thought of the seer’s words and wondered, was it only by chance? Or were they meant to be together?

“We have a right to be suspicious,” Rose said in a whispered undertone. “We _should_ be suspicious.”

Rey re-focused. Rose was right. How foolish would it be to trust one of the Knights of Ren? Not only were they steeped in mystery, but there were so many rumors surrounding them that it was hard to know what was true and what wasn’t. It wasn’t like the man standing at a distance had made any kind of effort to put their fears to rest. And if he had a name, he hadn’t told that to them, either.

“What if he _does_ mean us harm and he has been laughing at us under his helmet all this time?”

Rey looked at Rose, hesitating a moment before she finally said, “I think we have no choice but to trust him.” Even as she said the words, she sincerely hoped she was not going to regret her decision. But if there was even the slightest chance that he could help them find Ben, then that chance was worth taking.

“He was right about Orev,” Rey reminded both of her companions, looking from one to the other.

They had avoided the plague-ridden planet only because of his warning. Not that this place was any better. Nabihl was as dangerous a place as there was in the galaxy. A fomenting cesspool of smugglers, spies and criminals, it was situated between two hostile planets. Crossing the border planet between the two warring factions was always a risk.

The knight’s warning to them about Orev had been unexpected, and was met with doubt and suspicion, of course, until they learned that it was true. When he had shown up on Nabihl, however, Rey had been startled, if not alarmed to see him. But there again, he had saved them, this time by driving off the thieves who had intended to rob, and then probably kill them.

“He’s stalking us.”

Stalking. Maybe Rose was right. Maybe he was stalking them. What mattered more, however, was the reason behind the stalking. Rey had been cautiously vigilant from the first moment she had laid eyes on him. She was even more torn when he had gotten down on one knee and pledged his loyalty to her, because as hard as she had tried, she could not read him. Not only did he have a shield around his face. He had one around his heart as well. If it held dark motives, he was very good at hiding them.

The sound of an explosion, a loud one, brought Rey’s head around with a jerk. The urgency of their situation pressed upon her and she said, “He’ll come with us. For now. If he _is_ stalking us, it will be better for us if we know where he is at all times.”

* * *

The distant baying of Anyrin’s wolves reached them even in this underground place, possibly through small, unseen openings leading to the surface. The wolves here were more like will-o-the-wisps or spirits, sensitive to phases of the Anyrin moons. They were also shy and elusive. It was said that few had ever laid eyes upon them. But you could hear their haunting cries echoing through the darkness. The wolves were sacred here on Anyrin and the one they called the wolf driver herded them only to keep them safe.

Rey, along with the others, had already traversed miles of black tunnels that had been carved deep underground beneath a network of ancient fortresses. The maze of caves and tunnels seemed unending. Why the abandoned tunnels were here in the first place, no one knew. The only thing certain was that they were small and confining, narrowing almost impossibly in some places.

Chewbacca made a small sound, about to speak, but he cut the sound off abruptly as he stooped down. She knew he didn’t like this place. He was so tall that he had to stoop more than any of them. He definitely didn’t like confining places. That had become very clear to Rey.

Beyond the meager light of their lantern, everything remained as black as ink. It was a blackness so intense you could almost feel it. In this blackness they had traveled miles of tunnels without seeing a light anywhere. But Rey was suddenly aware of a strange light, a light she could _feel_. The walls opened up and she found herself looking over the side of a bridge. The water below her was clear and smooth as glass, but she could feel the pull of it. The coldness. There was a reflection trapped just below the surface of the water. A face-

She was out of the vision in an instant, realizing that she was still in the darkness of the tunnels. The feeling of the vision lingered, however, and for a long while she could not settle the feelings inside of her. Ever since they had been on Anyrin she had been having the visions which had been growing both in frequency and intensity. Sometimes, like the one she had just had, they came upon her without warning, so abruptly that it was hard to know what was real and what wasn’t.

The black-clad man beside her turned his face and looked at her, questioning. Rey knew instinctively that he was aware of her inner turmoil, but he remained silent and they continued on in the darkness.

Suddenly they emerged from the confining rock walls into a dark forest. Before them was a narrow bridge that spanned a river that flowed between two heavily-timbered ridges of land. There was water right below the bridge, from one end to the other. The water was so high that it kept lapping against the underside of the boards of the bridge.

A heavy fog lay all around them. It rose up from the ground and seeped through the boards of the bridge. On the other side of the bridge, half hidden in the drifting mist, she saw finally what they had been searching for. The dark, arching structure had to be the gate to the wolven field. She lifted her face and saw, as she had expected, ravens circling high above them. They were black silhouettes against the twin moons of Anyrin. Also on the far side of the bridge, a hooded, caped figure was watching them and Rey knew they had also found the wolf driver.

In this strange, dreamlike world of mist and moonlight, they began to make their way across the bridge. Jagged rock formations were black, starkly-etched shapes rising up out of the ever-shifting mist. In the silence there was only the incessant murmur of the water below them along with the creaking of rusty chains under their weight as they crossed the bridge. Other than that, everything was still, eerily still.

When they reached the end of the bridge they were immediately greeted by the caped man. As the last of them stepped from the planks of the bridge, lightning shredded the darkness above them from one end of the sky to the other. Thunder growled a low, lingering warning.

“Come,” the wolf driver urged them. “There is safe shelter not far away.”

The shelter turned out to be a cave. A small fire threw a dull red glare on the surrounding walls and on several wooden doorways, all of which were closed. Beneath his hood, the wolf driver’s eyes gleamed red in the firelight. They also saw wolves, dozens of them lying in the shadows. Their eyes also caught and reflected the firelight.

“Don’t worry. They won’t hurt you,” the wolf driver assured them.

That might be true, Rey thought, but as for the wolves, it was clear to see that one of them was injured. The wolf driver reached out, and with a soothing gesture, gently patted the head of a reclining wolf who had a dark gash along its side.

“When they are afraid,” he explained. “They run blindly, sometimes injuring, or even killing, themselves. Storms in particular make them nervous.”

The knight, for that was the only name Rey had to call him, was standing by himself as he usually did. As Rey watched, he dropped to his knees near a group of wolves. He reached a black gloved hand out and lightly stroked one of them. Others gathered closer to him, seeking attention as well. Rose was watching with some surprise while Rey marveled that the wolves were able to read something in the man that she had not been able to, something that they were drawn to.

“It will be best if you rest here tonight until the storm passes,” the wolf driver said to them. “I will fetch the elixir for you.”

He disappeared through one of the doors. Shortly after his retreating footsteps died away in the dark passageway, rain began to pour down with a vengeance outside the entrance to the cave.

While Rose and Chewbacca laid down for some badly-needed rest, sleep continued to elude Rey. The knight was also awake. Sitting by himself, he seemed transfixed by the fire. After a while, however, he got up and walked over to the doorway through which the wolf driver had disappeared. He stood staring at the blackness beyond the doorway for a while. When he motioned silently to her, Rey got up and joined him.

“Come with me,” he said very softly, throwing a brief glance over at the others. “I have something to tell you that I don’t want anyone else to hear.”

So far he had been a man of few words. His voice, she had already noted, was deep and rich, with a hint of accent, one she could not place, but that told her little about the man himself. Another low rumble of thunder kept her from asking any questions as he beckoned her deeper into the darkness. They had not gone far when caution made her pause, which made him also stop and turn back to her.

“This would be easier if I could see your face,” she said.

To her amaze, he silently removed his helmet.

She drew a slow, deep breath, caught completely unaware. She could see the scars even in the shadowy light. They covered almost his entire face.

His expression remained impassive, unreadable, but Rey detected something deeper in his eyes. There were shadows there, and perhaps a hint of cynicism as he ignored her startled reaction and said, “You’re in more danger than you suspect.”

“What kind of danger?” she asked.

“The worst kind,” he said as his eyes shifted briefly to the doorway behind them.

His expression had grown quietly intent suddenly and a stab of fear uncoiled in the pit of Rey’s stomach, making her instinctively take a step backward. At the same time, the knight’s black-gloved hand shot out and splayed hard against the wall, trapping her there.


	6. Chapter 4

“I- I’m not sure what you mean,” Rey said, trying hard to keep from panicking. “You said you had something to tell me.”

“Yes, I said that.”

The light of the torch the man held threw leaping shadows on the rough walls around them as well as upon his ravaged face. He fell silent again, lowering his hand at last and taking one step away from her. For the second time, his gaze went beyond her, as if he was seeing something distant.

This close to the man, Rey was suddenly assailed by an almost breathless sensation, one that centered in her chest and took her by surprise. She heard the soft clanking of chains, wondered where they could be coming from and turned her head to search the shroud of darkness that lay beyond the torch-lit aura.

But then, looking back, she drew a slow breath as she realized that the sound of chains was associated with the man, with the blackness inside of him. Not the blackness of the dark side, but the blackness of the pit of hell he had been imprisoned in for a very, very long time. She could feel the turmoil of soul, the agony, the despair. And grief. Grief sharp as a dagger’s blade.

“There are rumors that Darth Sidious is alive,” she heard him say quietly.

Her blood ran cold as the words sank in. “But only rumors?” she said hoping against hope.

“Which we would be foolish not to take seriously.”

He was right. They could not ignore even the possibility of such a threat. It would change everything.

“Word is also being whispered about _this_ place that there is a Jedi here,” he went on. “If that is the case, we should leave here. Tonight.”

As he continued to stare down at her, Rey was drawn again, almost helplessly, into the black chasm of his soul, which had at its core not the present, but the past, a past that had played a big part in molding him into what he was today.

As she stared up at the scarred visage, she was startled by yet another uncontrollable intrusion into her mind. A vision of how he had been forced to endure the worst of tortures, the most brutal of deprivations. She _felt_ the bitter cold, the starvation, the utter hopelessness, things that would have driven a lesser person to the edge of madness. A detached part of her felt things slow down. She looked around for a way out of the vision but found none. The pain came and grew inside her. Like a flame. A fire. She became a receptacle for pain. _His_ pain.

She was aware of several things at once, of his struggle to keep his hold on sanity, the loss of all those he had loved causing the worst of his suffering. And she became aware that in the secret workings of his heart there was a goodness in him that remained strong. Still. Ben’s presence, too, was woven through his memories, first with hatred and defiance, but that had changed. There was loyalty there. It was just one of the things that he clung to with an almost fierce determination, a stubbornness that did not waver.

Her own struggle to deal with all she was seeing must have shown in her face.

“This discourages you?” he asked.

“No, it’s all the more reason for finding him as quickly as we can.”

He nodded slightly. “We should expect a trap.”

It was her turn to nod. “Then we shall have to be careful not to get caught in it.”

Standing there in the torch-lit gloom, he studied her face and said, “You look like you’re seeing ghosts.”

Muffled thunder reverberated through the confines of the tunnel, echoing against the walls of the passageway. It kept her from immediately replying. Finally she asked in a whispered voice, “Do we ever get away from them? The ghosts?”

Was it a trick of the flickering light or did she detect the merest shadow of a smile?

He shook his head as his dark eyes probed deeply. Then he said soberly, “No, they stay forever a part of who we are.”

There was a hint of sadness in the lingering curve of his lips, but the smile turned wolfish, both of them spinning around as a new sound shattered the silence, a collective din of shrill shrieks. The screeching distracted Rey at first. Awareness immediately followed, but it came too late as a horde of winged creatures came sweeping like a terrible dark wave through the tunnel, straight at them. They were swift, violent, inexorable. 

It took them both by surprise. Rey was aware of wings flapping, claws raking. The clamor of screeches rose in pitch and frenzy. She was forced backward by the unexpected viciousness of the attack. She hit the rock wall behind her hard which caused fiery pain to jar through her shoulder and all along her spine.

The torch had fallen to the ground but Rey was aware of the knight drawing his sword. She couldn’t hear the sound of it being drawn it over the commotion of the horde, but she could see it glinting like fire in the torch light.

He stepped in front of her, shielding her body with his. “Protect your face,” he yelled as he lashed out with powerful sweeping thrusts. But the savage screeches only grew louder as the creatures came at them from all sides. For what seemed an eternity, the furious beating of wings continued. Talons, sharp as razors, ripped through flesh.

And then, in an instant they were gone. Whatever the creatures were, they disappeared into the darkness as suddenly as they had appeared. Rey lifted her hand to a stinging pain in her jaw and saw her hand come away wet with blood.

As the knight turned to her, she saw his brow crease in a worried frown at her gesture. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I think so,” she answered him right before he dropped to one knee, right before she saw that his marred face was stained with fresh blood.


	7. Chapter 5

“ _That_ is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. Not only is it stupid, but you are being completely irrational, not to mention reckless _and_ pig headed.”

Rose was silent for a moment and then Rey heard, “Are you even listening to me?”

“How could I not?” came the reply, a reply that Rey thought was not as irascible as, perhaps, it might have been.

Rey looked in turn from one to the other as she entered the room. The knight was still in bed, but sitting up, while Rose was standing beside the bed with both hands on her hips in a decidedly challenging posture.

“How is he?” Rey asked Rose, knowing full well she was running the risk of getting in the middle of something that had been brewing, _and_ building in intensity, for two days and nights now.

They both replied at the same time.

“Much better,” said he.

“He still needs rest,” said Rose.

“Maybe _you_ can convince her that I’m not as fragile as she seems to think I am,” the knight said to Rey.

“Who said anything about fragile?” Rose wanted to know archly.

Rey opened her mouth to reply, but what answer could she give that would not provoke one or the other of them?

“He’s being childish. He won’t take his medicine.”

“She’s trying to poison me.”

“ _You - have - to - take - the - medicine_ ,” Rose said, enunciating each word distinctly as if she were doing battle with a rebellious child. “Do I have to describe to you in detail _once more_ what kinds of diseases those things can carry?”

He snatched up the small bottle on the table beside the bed and, eyeing Rose defiantly over it, downed the contents in a single gulp. “Happy _now_?” he wanted to know, his last word wheezing out of his throat as he almost choked on the bitter elixir.

Rose’s reply was an openly triumphant smile, and then she told him, “I’ll be even happier if you stay in that bed.”

“How long?”

“A day at least.”

“We don’t have a day to waste,” he said after a small cough. The medicine did not go down easily. Its unpleasant taste was still lingering, not to mention it continued to scorch the back of his throat.

“You may not have _any_ days if you don’t do what I tell you,” Rose countered.

She all but dismissed him then and turned away, but Rey thought she heard a muffled laugh, was certain of it when Rose looked at her over her shoulder with a smile still sparkling in her eyes and said, “See if you can get him to listen to you. He doesn’t have the sense to listen to me.”

“Sense?” he called out after her as she left the room. “You have sense enough to feed me, I hope, since you’re the one ordering me to stay in bed.”

Rose, who was already out of sight, called back, “You’ll get fed. _If_ you’re still where you’re supposed to be when I come back with your food.”

After a silence, Rey looked at the man in the bed and said, “If I didn’t know better, I would think you actually enjoy fighting with her.” If she was not further mistaken, there was even a hint of a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth.

He let out a small scoffing breath as he continued to stare at the empty doorway. “Fighting is an easy enough thing to do with a woman with such a temperament. Do you know she called me a stubborn golack?”

Rey stepped closer to the bed so she could examine his wounds. “A golack? You may not want to hear this, but I agree with her. Not about the golack, but the part about you staying in bed a little longer.”

He shrugged, not committing himself to her suggestion one way or another, but at least he wasn’t getting out of the bed.

“You have remembered to drink _your_ elixir?” he asked Rey.

“Yes,” she replied. “Faithfully.”

Rey finally straightened, relieved to see that his wounds were healing, the new ones at least. She fussed around the room for a while, making small talk. “I’m glad you’re not wearing the helmet. It’s easier to talk to you face to face.”

“You thought I wore it in bed?”

She heard him laugh under his breath right before he sobered. “I wear it because it’s easier for others. I have reconciled myself to my appearance.”

Rey merely nodded, and after a silent moment or two, he asked another question. “What has you so troubled?”

“Troubled?” she asked, looking at him in surprise. “What makes you say that?”

“You work hard at hiding it, but I sense it from you.”

“Am I so easy to read?”

“To me,” he replied.

“And how are you able to do that?” she asked, giving him a sidelong glance. “Read me so easily.”

He shrugged again. This time it was a barely-perceptible lift of his broad shoulders. “I learned vigilance a long time ago. It was my only way to survive. I suppose it became a habit.”

He didn’t elaborate and Rey didn’t pry. She had been inside his head once before and it hadn’t been a comfortable place to be. Gradually, almost helplessly, she fell back into her own brooding thoughts, the same ones that had been consuming her lately.

“Whatever is on your mind,” he said. “Don’t you think it might be a good idea to share it with me?”

She paced the room once, then turned back again, half wanting to confide in him, half fearful of opening herself up. She had come a long way in trusting him, but still something held her back. Perhaps, in part, it was because the sensations warring within her were so raw, so sharp-edged, unidentifiable even. She was not at all certain what would happen if she let herself begin to actually _feel_ them completely. She saw it as a new weakness in her, something so deep and so potentially devastating that the only way for her to cope with it was to bury it away deep inside before she got too close to it. And while her instincts had served her well all of her life, her thoughts, and her emotions, now seemed to be tied up in hopelessly tangled knots, those same instincts dulled and practically useless in a way they had never been before.

Finally she heard herself admit, “I’ve been- seeing things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Places.” She closed her eyes and stood silent for a moment. “Places I don’t want to be.”

“Like dreams?” he asked, watching her closely.

She shook her head slowly. “More real than that,” she replied. “But yes, like dreams. They come mostly when I’m asleep.”

He waited for her to go on.

“I don’t like the emptiness I feel from these places. It’s cold and desolate. Lonely.” Just remembering the sensations that lingered long after those dreams made her hug herself tightly with her arms.

He sat there quietly intent, watching her. And then he asked, “You think that’s where he is?”

For answer she nodded slowly. He nodded, too, frowning as he became lost in his own thoughts.

For a moment, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something shift in the shadows outside the window. But when he glanced up, he saw nothing there. He looked back at Rey when he heard, “Even awake, I still feel the pull of the dreams. When I am having them, there are very different perceptual images that I am aware of. It’s like I’m seeing not with my eyes but with my mind even though it is still keeping things hidden from me.”

She drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “The dark. The light. It’s as if they chase each other there endlessly. I feel a gaping void and hear small sounds echoing, like time is suspended in that place. I have tried to see more clearly, tried churning things up in my mind, tried focusing on details, but none of them take root. Except-

“I am aware of a presence in the dreams, one that I cannot reach but one that I am helplessly drawn to. Maybe it’s- Ben.” She hung her head, overcome for long moments by a surge of turbulent emotions that threatened to swamp her. “My greatest fear is that all he is left with is sadness. I feel it here,” she said in a whispered voice as she laid her hand upon her heart. “Such deep sadness.”

“Then that is all that matters,” said the knight. “Your heart is what you must follow.”

“In those fleeting moments when I _can_ see clearly,” she went on in a haunted voice. “He is lying on his back with his hair straggling across his face, a face that I can never quite focus on. But I _can_ feel the half-dead state he is in. I feel that- that his pain _is_ his darkness. He seems not quite dead, but close to death, and I want to make myself believe that it isn’t true. I want to get to him, thinking that maybe I can revive him, or else I will be there to hold him before his body turns cold with death. I am desperate to hold the last warmth of life in him because- because he has to know that someone cares. I need to- I- ” she faltered.

Without consciously thinking about it, she had reached her hand out. That hand was trembling. Looking down at it with troubled eyes, she drew it back sharply and grasped it tightly in her other hand.

She drew a deep, unsteady breath. “I know that there is a reason for all of this turmoil inside me and I know that I must find a way to reconcile with it.”

“I agree.”

“And I have realized that while I thought all along that I was fighting _him_ , it was more than that. So much more.”

Looking at the knight with troubled eyes, she said, “I sense something else is there with us. Another presence. A threat. It is no more than a shadow, but I can feel it watching us. It has a savage hunger,” she whispered, almost shuddering outwardly at the memory. “A terrible hunger. I can almost see a mouth drawn back in an awful, sneering snarl. I can almost hear the slow, panting breaths that rasp in and out of that mouth. It’s wrath is- devouring. The more you fight against it, the more ravenous it will become. I fear it will destroy us, all because I cannot summon any weapons against it. And that terrifies me.”

“Our weapons are not always where we think we will find them,” Rey heard. “Nor our salvation. You only lose when you begin to believe the lies that are used against you. Then you are in danger of letting those same lies swallow you whole.”

She knew it was something he understood far more than she did. It was something his own soul had fought against.

“When you decide there is no yielding except to the truth, then it will be so,” he told her.

After a silence, Rey heard, “If these are true force visions they will only get stronger. But you already know that.” And then, “Elek,” he said. “My name is Elek.”


	8. Chapter 6

The wind wailed like a wolf famished on the vast desolation that was the planet Prisma. Rey reached up with one hand to brush aside a stray curl that blew across her cheek. “I wasn’t expecting this,” she said as she shifted her gaze to look at Elek who followed her words with his own almost inaudible comment. “Nor I.”

“Do you think it’s here?” she asked.

“No.”

A long silence followed his words as she thought over his reply. And then she asked another question, “Do you think _we_ brought it here?”

He gave the same answer. “No.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He turned to her. “Because your blood makes you immune.”

His answer took her by surprise. “And you?” she asked.

He drew a deep breath, a half sigh, and released it slowly. “It’s a long story, but I’m immune as well.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This plague is not some random act of nature,” he said as he continued to stare into the distance.

“What is it then?”

“Biological warfare. An unseen weapon unleashed against an unsuspecting galaxy.”

She stared at him, trying to process it all. “Is there a way to stop it?”

“There is always an antidote to evil.” He looked back at her. “You remembered to drink of your elixir today?”

“Yes,” she replied, suspecting at the same time that there was much he wasn’t telling her. “You’ve been keeping a great deal from me,” she charged.

“You will know everything in its time. This plague is but part of a larger, more insidious plan. When everyone is infected, a cure will be magically found. Only the cure will have unimaginable consequences. No less than the beginning of the end.”

“The end of what?” Rey asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“The end of all life forms as they now exist.”

It was the last thing she wanted to hear.

“This is a war,” he went on. “A silent one. The weapon is one that can’t be fought against. No one can see the enemy. Most don’t even know there is an enemy, although some are beginning to question. The cure will be like a poison that will bring about the corruption of every race in the galaxy.”

“You’ve known about this all along?”

“Not at first. I suspect that this is just the first wave. A test. They’ve unleased it to study its effects. The cure, when they offer it, will be infused with- _foreign_ DNA,” he said a little ominously, a little grimly. “Which will be activated when they have everything in place.”

Rey didn’t know what to say, simply because she couldn’t find the words to express all she was feeling. The plague that had begun on Orev was sweeping through the galaxy at a seemingly impossible speed. The sheer number of the dead and the dying was already enough to stagger the senses. Entire worlds had shut down, isolating in a desperate attempt to halt, or at least to slow, the spread of the disease. And now that she knew that it was all intentional, that so much death and suffering and fear had been deliberately and cold-bloodedly planned, it was worse than she had imagined.

Rose and Chewbacca had also fallen ill so there was only the two of them left now. It had been hard leaving them behind, but they’d had no choice. The whole time Rey had thought it was a miracle that they had not fallen ill, too, but now it seemed there was a reason for that.

“I can’t stop thinking about Rose and Chewbacca,” she said. “I hated leaving them behind.”

“They’ll be all right,” she heard. “It’s the way they wanted it.” He gave a kind of grim laugh under his breath. “Rose won’t let anything happen to either one of them. The woman is wise in the ways of healing and far too stubborn to give in to a mere sickness.”

Rey tried to make herself believe that he was right as she gazed at the surrounding landscape with its shimmering, crystalline mountains and its luminous mists of varying, intense hues.

“It’s beautiful here, but it’s also so- desolate. So forsaken.” Even menacing, she thought. “It seems like we’re the only people here.”

“But there _are_ others here.”

She looked sharply at the knight.

“What better place for those who do not want to be found to hide out?” He looked at her more closely. “You must sense something here. You must sense _him_.”

“I sense something, yes,” she began. “I have from the moment we arrived here.”

“And your visions?”

“I haven’t had any since we have been here.”

As she searched the crystal-like landscape, he waited for her to go on.

“I find I must struggle constantly to gain control over my emotions. There is light here. It’s powerful, but I- I feel the darkness, too, woven through it. Something happened here. Something that left a lasting mark on this place. It’s everywhere. It’s in the very air we breathe. Something so catastrophic that- ” She drew a sharp breath. “Ah- What is it that I feel? Heat. Consuming heat, something that blighted all things.”

“You’re right,” he said on a heavy sigh. “It’s all here. The beginning. The end,” he said cryptically.

“The Seer said that Ben was like a butterfly trapped in crystal. There has to be a way to find him and to stop what’s happening,” she said hopefully.

“You have to stop it, yes. And Ben.”

Such a task seemed daunting, impossible. “I want to believe that I can do that, but- ”

“If you seek the truth, you will find it,” Elek told her. “The darkness seeks to destroy all light, but you will soon see past the darkness, even to the very one who wishes to wreak so much devastation upon an entire galaxy.”

“Who would want- ” she began.

His scarred face turned to her, looking almost ghastly in the deeply-hued, filtered light. “You know who it is, Rey.”

She experienced a sharp pang of soul-wrenching foreboding as terrible realization flooded her. Palpatine was behind it all. Palpatine was still alive. Had she known it all along? Had she tried to make herself not believe it? At the same time, helpless anguish washed over her as she slipped once again, unwillingly, into that place that was the dark abyss of the knight’s soul. Again, she experienced repeating echoes of all that he had been forced to endure, the brutal punishments he’d been subjected to, the merciless, diabolical tortures, all of it calculated to break him. And all at the hands of the evil that was known as Palpatine.

A deep silence fell between them. A long, contemplative silence. When Rey finally dared to look at the knight’s profile, his scarred expression seemed cast in stone as he continued to stare somberly into the mist-shrouded distance, and when he spoke again, his words were low and sober. “As knights we had access to ancient texts. Kylo Ren was ever on a quest for knowledge which caused him, and us, a great deal of trouble. But he was relentless and found ways to defy those who sought to control him. I, too, came to know the origins of the Sith and their ways. And their plans.”

He fell silent suddenly, and then, “But we will have to save that for later. Come, we have a long, hard climb ahead of us and we must get as far as we can before we lose the daylight.”

“This might be a good time to tell you that I’m afraid of heights,” Rey told him.

He held his hand out to her. “Then this might be a good time to tell you that I have no intention of letting you fall.”


	9. Chapter 7

Elek held the torch at arm’s length as both of them searched the vast darkness that surrounded them. However, there was much hidden beyond the light’s reach.

“How did you know about this place?” Rey asked as she glanced over at the knight, her voice sounding hollow as it echoed faintly back from the stone walls that rose all around them. In all directions, phantasmagoric, black shapes rose from a faint, diaphanous haze while high above them, the ceiling vanished as it became lost in the oblivion of darkness that seemed to have no end.

“The ancient texts,” Elek replied. “This was how they escaped.”

“Who escaped?”

“The ancestors of the Sith.”

“What were they escaping from?” she asked in a quieter voice as she turned her face away from him.

“The consequences of embracing the dark side and abandoning themselves to all its abominations and depravities.”

After a silence, he went on to answer her unasked question. “They gave themselves over to things too terrible to speak of. Their acts were wanton, reckless even.”

Rey looked around. “I can feel it,” she said in a hushed voice. “I can feel their lingering as if they have become a part of this place. It’s as if they have left their impression in the very walls. They were violent, filled with rage. And hatred so deep that it- ” She paused, searching for the right words to express it all. “Hatred so deep that it began to define who they were.”

“Yes, the darkness had already sunk its claws deep into their souls. In the end it was to become their downfall.”

“To live like this, in darkness, must have been almost unbearable,” she said. “Even for them.”

The knight eyed her over the lantern’s garish light which deeply etched the shadows on his scarred face. “In truth they were banished here,” he said gravely. “Even if they could have escaped their prison, they didn’t dare attempt it. They knew they were here to be a warning to others of what to expect should they choose the same path. Some of them came to believe that death would have been a welcome reprieve to their torment here,” he went on.

Yes, Rey could feel it growing even stronger now, the echoes of a past long since gone.

“Even though it was so long ago,” she whispered. “It seems- indelible. Like it has become a part of the shadows.”

He looked at her. “They spent generations here underground. They were called the cursed ones. They never realized that the original dark judgments were about _them_. Instead they let the venom of hatred poison them so that it festered like a deep wound. Living by a code of vengeance, aggression and wrath, they immersed themselves even more deeply, almost savagely in their hatred rather than face the truth.”

“The truth,” Rey echoed in a ghost of a voice. “So ultimately they _chose_ to leave the light to exist down here in the darkness.”

“They grew to hate the light. They saw it as the cause of all their suffering.”

Rey shivered as the cold and the dampness sank more deeply into the marrow of her bones. She could almost feel the blackness of the shadows around them, almost feel the tendrils of mist that eddied in eerie, slow-motion swirls around their feet. One could almost imagine that the spirits of the ancient Siths were still trapped here.

“They never found a resolution to their suffering, so they stayed trapped in an illusion of the truth, not allowing themselves to see too deeply, for if they did, if they let themselves see all that they had lost, they were in danger of falling into an abyss of grief too painful to be endured.”

“It’s been said that the first Siths were an insect race.”

“Because they had wings, yes, that rumor began,” Elek replied. “But there was no truth to it.”

“They- ” she began, stopping short as comprehension began to dawn. She looked back at Elek, shaking her head as if to deny even the possibility.

“All their ways grew out of their bitterness,” he told her. “Even their worship.”

“Their ancient dragon worship?”

“Yes, even that.”

Elek turned. “Come. We’ve lingered here long enough.”

Rey followed after him, keeping close. She was beginning to sense that there was more here than they could see, much more.

They had not gone far when a cold breath of wind stirred against her face. A slight thing, yet something new, something almost unsettling accompanied it, touching upon all her senses. She did not like this place. It was cold and it was damp and steeped in a murky darkness that weighed heavily upon her. She could not be sure where the surrounding walls ended or what lay beyond the darkness. Already they had passed many tunnels that led into the dark unknown. They were strangely menacing places that made her stomach grow cold and shivery each time they encountered one.

The feeling of cold dread suddenly increased in the pit of her stomach. Had she only imagined that something shifted in the shadows? Was there a darker mass among the blackness? She blinked, straining to see. Wary of new dangers, she glanced around but saw nothing. Her heightened senses, however, were becoming more attuned to _something_. Something almost breathtakingly sinister. Something _alive_.

The claustrophobic walls suddenly opened up into a large, cavernous chamber. The walls here were etched with intricate carvings of fearsome, violent scenes. A narrow, winding staircase, carved into the rock itself, led upward, disappearing into darkness. To their left a seemingly bottomless pit yawned wide. And while an unbroken silence still held the darkness, Rey felt suddenly overwhelmed by an onslaught of sensations. There was a terrible odor hanging on the air, a sickening stench like nothing she had ever smelled before. There came, too, a faint scratching noise, a sound so soft she wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it.

Fear coiled in the pit of her stomach as the smell intensified. She began to react to the stench on a primal level as it came rushing against her in breath-stealing waves. It was a nauseating, awful combination of things that felt hot and heavy in her lungs, like seawater and smoldering garbage and-

And the unmistakable taint of sulphur.

The shadows were still deep and deceptive as they had been all along, but this time she was certain that something moved within them. In stunned horror she watched as a great bulk detached itself slowly from the walls. And then, in the midst of the bulk of moving darkness, she saw twin orbs gleaming eerily, reminding her of the greenish mercury pools on Naain. 

Even as she tried to gather her scattered thoughts, what she now realized were eyes suddenly blinked. Once. Twice. And then she heard breathing. The slow, deep chuffing pants of an animal scenting its prey. 

Her blood turned to ice as Elek thrust the torch forward as the great shadow with its terrible eyes rose up higher. And higher still until it was looming high above them. The entire length of the beast was black as pitch and partially coiled in the lantern’s light. Even Elek drew his breath in sharply. As for Rey, she could not look away from the evil, fixed gleam in those serpentine eyes.

The dragon’s mouth opened wide, exposing razor-sharp teeth, teeth that widened even further right before it unleashed a blast of heated, vile breath as an unholy shriek shredded the darkness with fury.


	10. Chapter 8

The unholy shriek was followed by a vicious snapping of teeth, teeth that just missed Elek. Instead they grazed off the armor on his chest, slamming him backward against the rock wall behind him. He quickly recovered and raised his sword before him, managing to fend off the next attack, one that surely would have rent him in two had he not moved in time. The clanging sound, Rey realized, was his sword connecting with those lethal teeth. It made the beast hesitate, but its wrath was unmistakable.

Drawing her own sword, mourning at the same time the absence of her lightsaber, Rey braced herself for battle. Tilting her head upward, she focused on the greenish luster of the dragon’s eyes as its upper body swayed almost hypnotically back and forth high above them. From the corner of her own eye she saw Elek brandishing his sword before him with both hands. He, too, was braced for battle.

The great bulk of the giant shifted, darkness lost in darkness. Wrapped in the ebony shadows, it was hard to know where the dragon’s body began and where it ended. And then Rey saw with horror that the thing had wings, which made it appear even bigger, even more threatening. The huge, bat-like wings slowly extended, stretching wide with a hushed flapping noise. Without warning something knocked Rey off her feet. It happened so fast that she had no time to react. She pitched awkwardly to one side on the hard, uneven ground, tried but could not break her fall. She went down hard and hit a projection of the stone wall with her shoulder, wincing at the agony shooting all the way down her arm. The pain was enough to take her breath away. A small landslide of rocks began out of nowhere, causing the ground to give way beneath her. She reeled, struggling to keep her footing. Unable to stop herself from sliding, she dropped several feet to a narrow ledge, landing painfully on her knees but managing to keep her grip on her sword.

Shaking her head to clear it, she could see a deep, yawning crevice in the rock before her, saw, too, at the very same instant that there were bones, great piles of them gleaming in the torch-lit darkness. Beyond and below the bones was an abyss of blackness. Ignoring the hot stinging in her shoulder and arm, she pushed herself back to her feet, thinking: She could not die today. Ben was waiting for her.

A serpentine hiss, a truly frightening sound, filled the darkness. A sound of rage, and more. It was followed by a prolonged, low rattling growl. And then there was the ringing sound of steel clanging against teeth once again as Elek fended off another attack. Once more the beast roared its fury. The sound of it rang in Rey’s ears as it echoed back from the cavernous walls.

Once again the dragon shifted its position, turning its attention back to her on the ledge, lowering its huge, reptilian head down to her level. It was a terrifying sight in the reddish glow of the fallen torch. Deadly talons rose slowly over her, talons that she knew were easily capable of tearing her to shreds in a moment.

But they didn’t fall just yet. Luminous eyes blinked, seeming to study her. At the same time, slow deep breaths panted. Reeking of smoke. Of Sulphur. The words of the seer came back to her as in a dream. “The dragon’s heated breath is enough to scorch anything that looks it in the eye.”

Rey could feel the heat of its breath already, at least a precursor of it. The heat increased alarmingly. But she had already determined that she would not die cowering here in this dark, terrible place waiting for death. She would fight. Despite her fear. Despite the odds against them.

She slowly rose up. There was a puff of smoke between her and the dragon. It drifted before her as if in slow motion, looking garish and surreal in the dull torch light. She saw a faint glow of fire like burning embers from the dark cavern of the beast’s throat. Sparks. She gritted her teeth, fighting the wave of nausea that rushed over her. The heated stench was truly rancid, hitting her with full force now and causing her to close her eyes and turn her head away.

The heat grew till it was like fire. Scorching. So hot that a strangled cry of pain caught in her throat. So hot that she gasped at the burning sensation against her skin.

“Rey!”

She opened her eyes at the same moment that the dragon swung its head away from her. Elek’s arm was lifted high. His sword glinted red. The dragon rose up. Leaving its heart exposed, Rey thought vaguely.

Elek moved with a speed that Rey would have thought was impossible. Without hesitation, he plunged the entire length of his sword upward into the into dragon’s body, straight into the heart of the beast. Once. Twice. And a third time.

While Rey watched, he withdrew his sword, backing away as black blood bubbled out of the three wounds. The blood seemed to seethe and effervesce, fomenting venomously while the dragon screeched, while the entire length of the beast coiled and uncoiled violently in what were hopefully its death throes. Gradually the body stilled and slowly sank downward to disappear into the depths of the black abyss.

Rey climbed up off of the ledge, keeping one eye on the yawning pit. Save for a slight mist that rose from the blackness, nothing moved and no sound could be heard. She turned to Elek. That’s when she could see, beyond him, a hint of daylight at a distance and realized that the dragon must have been blocking it with its body before. But there could be no mistake. The sun was infusing its light into the darkness. It made her remember the words Elek had once told her: “The cold and the darkness are not forever things. We gain nothing by fearing to go ahead. Or by giving up on hope.”

Hope. She clung to it with all her being as she realized that she could feel Ben’s nearness with everything that was in her.

Elek held his hand out to her. “Come,” he said. “Let us finish this.”

* * *

Around his lofty tower, the birds sang in the soft early sunshine, blending their voices. He, too, was like a bird, a caged one, but for the first time in a very long time it felt as if his heart had wings and that he could fly free. He could feel, at the very edge of his being, stirrings of life - the man, even the child that he once was, all that lived in his memory, despite the darkness that was his pain, despite the shadow that had loomed over him all his life. Unable to rid himself of the chains that had been placed around him, he had bowed under the weight of them for so long that he had forgotten what it was like without them. Or perhaps he had never known.

But a new day was dawning and he was _aware_ of the dawning. The trees bowed gently over him, beckoning. The leaves quivered beneath the breath of the wind. He, too, trembled on the verge of-

Of what?

Awareness.

A wish.

A soul-felt one.

A desire to sift thru all the lies and distractions of the world and find finally the utter, naked truth of who he really was, of just how deep the roots really went. Nothing halfway, nothing mediocre.

Because, miraculously, deep inside he was still holding a vision of all life ought to be, for in that place of deepest sleep, his dreams had become revelations. He was, in fact, so deeply affected by the truths drawn up from the depths of his being that he was aware of a pain in his chest, something his heart had never known before. There was a connection, a profound awareness of something- some _one_ reaching down into the depths of him. Even when he had been immersed in darkness, even when he had bowed down near death, _she_ had jarred the truth in him and made him want to live, made him want to allow her to ease the wounds that sin had carved out. To heal with-

With love. 

While the first trembling flush of dawn grew around him, it seemed that he was awakening from a nightmare and that reality was slowly coming back to him. A reality where he remembered the beautiful things of his soul.


	11. Chapter 9

Elek’s hand shot out. His fingers closed firmly around Rey’s wrist, stopping her, holding her back when she would have rushed recklessly forward across the bridge without heed or regard for what might lie at the end. They remained paused there on the wide, rough-hewn planks of the bridge, staring at the darkness ahead of them, unable to penetrate its mist-shrouded depths. 

To stop now was unthinkable to Rey, but Elek would not release her arm. “Why are we stopping?” she asked him.

“I’m not certain,” he answered her as his gaze lifted to the canopy of leaves arching above them, the curling tendrils of brighter, vibrant green just now opening and blooming amidst the ancient twisting branches, everything half-illuminated in dappled, shifting patterns by the almost-eerie light that pierced the leaves.

Without looking at her, he said, “I only know that he would want me to keep you safe.”

Rey frowned at the dark intensity of his look, and then, she, too, turned her face to look back at the dark menace of the castle before them with its forbidding darkness, _feeling_ the darkness now with every fiber of her being. 

Nothing moved. No sounds could be heard. And yet-

And yet the darkness beyond that doorway almost breathed with a life of its own, hinting at a great mystery, at things ancient yet timeless. Things unseen.

Elek moved forward cautiously - one step, then two - only to stop again as they both heard, very faintly, the slow creak of rusted chains beneath the invisible hand of a phantom wind, a wind that was haunting in its suddenness. And now Rey was seeing what he was seeing. In a suspended cage were the skeletal remains of some poor soul who had died long ago, whose bones were hanging there still, perhaps as a warning to anyone, to _them_ of the dangers that lie ahead. 

And now something else came rushing over her in heart-stopping waves, at the very same moment that realization flooded her and brought a startled gasp to her lips.

A shadowy figure emerged slowly from the misty darkness. It glided forward smoothly and inexorably until the light caught the pale and ghastly visage of- 

Of Palpatine.

In the midst of the black cowl, a smile appeared on that awful, ravaged face and after that a low, cackling laugh shredded the silence, echoing back from the high stone walls. “Were you really not expecting to see me again?” Palpatine asked in a raspy voice, a voice so taunting and so filled with sinister promise that it sent a cold chill down Rey’s spine.

Palpatine then turned his attention to Elek. “A pity you have forgotten that there are consequences for disobeying me.”

To both of them, he said, “Amazing that you have come here expecting a fairy tale ending. Alas, you will both learn that your unfortunate fate is to learn what true suffering is.” He narrowed his eyes which were bright and piercing within the shadows of the cowl and looked around, taking in the overhanging leaves. “Perhaps it was always meant to end here,” he croaked softly with his face up-tilted.

He looked back at them and said to Elek, “You have forgotten the power I once held over you. But- ” He paused as another slow smile appeared on his decrepit face. “Very soon you shall have plenty to remind you that you were once broken, utterly. Now you shall be destroyed. Utterly.

“There were things that you once cared about, things that I took away from you. There are things you care about now. It is your fault alone that you must re-learn some of the lessons that you once took to heart. As it did before, your weak sentiment has blinded you to reality. And what I am capable of,” he added ominously.

The knight’s head lifted. His voice was husky, scarcely audible as he said, “Perhaps you are not as capable as you believe yourself to be.” 

Palpatine’s sneer was pure evil. “I should think you would already know that relying on some sort of divine intervention is useless. Your pathetic prayers,” he said contemptuously. “Didn’t do you any good then. They will not spare you now.” 

High above them, against the blue patches of sky, a bird took flight, its cambered wings outstretched as it rode the air currents. Its piercing cry reached them even in the shadows far below.

Palpatine suddenly thrust his hand out before him, leprous fingers extended. “Now for your first lesson, a much needed one. You have forgotten to bow before me. Kneel,” he commanded in a strident, ringing voice.

Immediately Elek dropped to his knees. He remained there, helpless, trying to gasp air into his constricted lungs.

Before Palpatine’s terrible power, Rey faltered. It was not a conscious decision. It was an instinctive one, something that, at first, she had no control over. 

Palpatine turned his attention back to her and held out his hand again. Her sword dropped from her hand and fell with loud, resounding clang to the boards below her.

Palpatine waved his black-clad arm and winged creatures fluttered forth from the darkness behind him. His hood fell back, revealing him fully. He stood before them as he was, a monstrous, hideous, decaying caricature of a man.

With terrible, hissing incantations, he continued to call forth the winged things that fluttered about him now like a swarm of flies.

“A pity you could not make the decision to join me,” he called out to Rey, raising his voice so that it could be heard above the shrill screeches of the maddened swarm.

“You should have realized that I would never do that,” Rey called back.

A humorless smile twisted his lips. “Ah, my dear, you are still clinging pathetically to hope? You will soon learn that there is no hope left. Not in this world or any other.”

“I will never believe that.” 

“Such a foolish innocent. Still. You cannot overcome me.”

Fear had sunk its sharp claws deep into Rey’s heart. And yet something more powerful rose up, something that gave her renewed courage. She thrust the fear away with a fierce determination. At that moment she was able to divine a deeper truth. Together, with Ben, there was hope. Together they were invincible. Palpatine had always known that he must separate them because apart they were powerless. But together- Together they were an indomitable force. 

And therein lay the secret. The invisibility of Palpatine’s lies gave them power. Make them known, bring them into the light, and they would crumble to dust.

It was all coming apart. It was all coming together. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Elek rise.

A rushing roar suddenly rose like a tempest, causing the winged creatures to immediately retreat back into the darkness. Fire began to spread through the trees all around them. It became a sea of fire, an inferno that melted the glass in the wilderness surrounding the castle while the stones of the castle itself protected them.

The fire burned hot. It burned quickly, burning itself out as suddenly as it had appeared until there were only gray ashes left and the glow of red embers here and there in the smoldering gray.

But that did not detract from the beauty that surrounded them. Not all was destroyed, but merely blighted, purified, waiting for a new beginning, for this was where it had all begun in the ancient past. This was the sacred place. 

There were mornings. There were mornings. And this one she would hold forever in her heart. Rising out of the gray ashes, in the full blaze of cleansing sunlight, stood Ben himself.

Palpatine gave a cry and stumbled back with gaping jaw. Continuing to back away, he cowered, bent now like an old man who was trying to find refuge in the darkness.

But the sleeping prince stood before him, awake now, unfettered by the darker things that had bound him for so long, for it is an enduring truth that there is that which works together for the good. The man once known as Kylo Ren drew strength from deeper depths, from deeper truths. The love had become a way of freeing his soul. He embraced it now, every spoken word, every breathless emotion, every single moment of the journey, and found, in the end, that the love was stronger than the darkness. At last, he had come home.

It was love, after it all, that saved Rey as well. Ben held his hand out to her, silently joining his fate with hers. Together. That was the hope. That was the promise.

She placed her hand in his, and as he looked at her, he smiled. It was a strong, beautiful smile that told her all she needed to know. It reflected the happily-ever-after she had always yearned for. And she smiled back at him, wishing as one might wish upon a star, or a dream that is too powerful to let go of.

  
  
  


_The end_


End file.
